Hi Ben when do you think democracy should have a cut off point for voting? What should we do if 14 or 15 year olds say they should be allowed to vote. Young people nowadays are much more mature than say 20-30 years ago. Maybe if young people feel very strong about the age of voting they should get on their soapbox and petition to change. Polls sometime takes a handful of young people and say that is what they really want. I am not saying that we should stay the same because that is the way it has always been but everyone matures differently and voting is a serious business.

I think bringing the vote down to 16 is a good idea. If you can get married at 16 or legally make a baby why not be able to vote. Political education is supposed to be covered in your citizenship lessons. I do know every school does not take citizenship too seriously.

As I believe in democracy the more people who can make a knowledgeble vote the better for the country. But I do know many teenagers think politics are boring. I think by bringing the voting age down and maybe getting young people involved in voting to get things done in Darlington that affect them would be a good idea. The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow.

Whilst I accept that many young people are mature enough to vote at 16 there also many more who would not bother. We already have a problem with voter apathy in Great Britain and this means that there is often low turn out at elections, opening the elections to more people would mean that statistically the turnout would be even lower.

My solution (if I ruled the world!) would be to make political education compulsory and keep the voting age at 18+ but make voting compulsory.

Political education is a learning tool to help make people aware and form their own views, it would have to be taught on an unbiased system and teachers wouldn’t be able to share their political views. More awareness of politics would make our UK population more politically aware and maybe more people would be enticed to vote and make a dfifference.

I just read about this in the Northern Echo. I think it was a good idea to have the poll and I’m very impressed by the result, I’m really pleased there is such an interest, because it has been a problem in the past that not enough people vote, especially young people. So I am in favour.
Some say that young people will not know enough about the ideas that political parties talk about but that is a general problem in the whole of society. I think young people feel very strongly about some things and that should be given expression by voting at 16.